The Methods of Contextualising written response was divided into two parts.
- Individually written statement on the project
- A set of 6 references developed as a group
Categories
1.5 Written Responses
Category: UNIT 1
For the fifth brief, me and members of my group (Rada, Shavonne) decided to work with a collection of stamps issued by Finnish postal service in 2014 featuring illustrations from a Finnish homoerotic artist Tom of Finland.
To start the process, we begun exploring the stamps, researching on the V&A website and taking notes. We had an active discussion over our opinions and positions.
For my position, I was not surprised that the idea coming from one of the North European countries, as it is viewed by Czech as a developed, modern part of Europe. In my opinion, Czech could potentially once see this as a possibility, but in the future, maybe a few years. I personaly think the timing of Finland’s project was a bit inconvenient for the rest of the Europe, and that it came a bit “too soon”. I think the time for such project would be now as my generation is the loudest and keen to fight for change and raise the topic on social media.
I wondered what the “affect/reaction” would be if such stamps were produced now? In 2023 when people openly talk and share topics of sexuality and gender.
Find the whole process below:
Categories
1.4 Written Response
This week I continued by: Brainstorming, asking more questions, experimenting digitally and with Risograph to come up with an approach that challenges Riso.
Question development based on the last week’s feedback:
How to achieve an effect/ illusion of plasticity and depth in my Riso prints without using the 3D glasses?
And how to transform that into an approach that can be continued and developed?
The task for the third week was to develop 10-100 (or more) iterative experiments that challenge the chosen medium (Risograph) to do something that it is not meant to do. To achieve that we were challenged to think about the answers for following questions -> what it does, how it does it, or what it does it for.
Week 1 of the “Unit 1: Methods of Iterating” brief started with identifying a tool or medium that interests me but that I am not experienced with. Coming from my previous experience as a (digital) graphic and brand designer, I decided to work with Risograph. I have always admired the vivid colours and grainy touch of the machine, but never had an opportunity to explore it more. I took this brief as an opportunity to learn a new medium, lean toward my goal of bringing my digital work into physical form and challenge my skills.
The second task for the first week was to find an artist, that effectively uses the medium, and choose one of his works to replicate as accurately as possible for week 2. In my research, I was looking for work that already challenges Riso printing as a medium and will allow me to explore my own ideas.
After researching a number of artists, I found a Dutch graphic and textile designer Michiel Schuurman. His work specialises in typography and poster design, featuring a bold and fearless approach. He bases his projects on certain logic, algorithms or some historical or natural knowledge that he critically examines and challenges, which I identify close to my own practice. I got interested in a few of his print pieces from his 2018 book. Through his work, he pushes Risograph to its best, exploring ways to achieve 3-dimensional effects. His work already raised a few questions for me to begin with, mainly about movement, dynamics and depth achieved through the typical characteristics of Risograph.
Some of Michiel Schuurman’s works from his 2018 Risograph book:
After the first week’s class I started the process. To get to know the Risograph machine, I identified one of Michiel’s works that I aimed to iterate and I started in Illustrator to replicate the piece. That bit took me longer than expected, as the creation of the pattern was a challenge on it’s own. I have tried numerous tools and ways before I got the right outcome. The shadow was eventually created on iPad in Pro Create.
The piece I’ve chosen to iterate/ replicate (left) + my outcome in the digital ready-to-print version (Right)
Another step was preparing the files for print, exporting each colour layer separately in black and white and finally printing the work out. Through printing, I noted a few technical pointers down about working with the machine:
- You need some time to work – time to let the ink dry so it doesn’t smudge, time to prepare your print settings to get the outcome you wish for
- The machine is slightly skewed, so there is a distortion where the print is in the corners
- It is better to allow a few pixels around the shapes to avoid white spaces due to the nature of the machine, the white spaces can be eliminated by manually shifting the layers – the skewed corners
- The colours look different on the screen even when using spot colour, so it is important to try and print out to be able to adjust the colours
- Limited colour pallete, but layering of the colours creates new shades.
- The type, weight, and colour of the paper affect the final image and the colour tone
- There are two different types to finish the printing, grain coating, which I used in my prints, but there is the possibility to screen coating that works with dots, different sizes of the dots affect the image
- The machine was made for mass production but the outcome looks like a handmade and one-of-a-kind piece of work
- The layering and the little changes in the position of the print show movement
Written response (DRAFT 1):
The results that the Risograph produces reveal flaws in the print or texture, that are sometimes inconsistent or uneven. The graininess adds a handcrafted feel. And the bold and vibrant colours give the outcome an almost limited edition, one-of-a-kind feeling with a soul and character of its own. Yet the Idea of Risograph was to bring a way to mass production that is cheap, simple and effective. That raises a question of authenticity and almost fake realness in this tool that was meant for effective and low-cost reproduction.
The ability to layer and overlap objects bring a way to achieve new colours add depth, a sense of movement, dimension and a fantasy-like feeling of blurred motion and more things happening at one moment.
Working with Risograph as a medium raises questions of minimalism, and complexity hidden behind simplicity. How far can we take minimalism? How can we achieve complexity that benefits from simplicity? How far can we take expressiveness and emotion through Riso as a medium that is flat and has limitations? How to push the medium to achieve a sense of motion?
Before diving into further experimenting, I did a little brainstorming over goals and things I would like to achieve through the final version of the project.
I was thinking about the way how to allow the reader to engage with the concrete poetry in a different way than usual. (Usually in printed or digital form)
- I wanted to change the flat narrative of the picture I created.
- I wanted to explore the possibilities of using both digital form and physical materials and keeping the “traditional and noble” character of the poem, yet translating it into something new and “different” to meet the brief.
- I noticed that the meaning of the poem is quite unclear at the beginning, and the reader gets the idea of life and death, the cycle of life and nature’s meaning later in the poem. I felt like that was an interesting find that could also be presented in the project.
I sorted the poem by its rhymes and created a different piece of the concrete poetry for each of those parts. I combined a slightly abstract form with a more literal form to create a set of 9 pictures that can be layered into 1 picture. I wanted to mainly focus on a visual interpretation of the poem. The pictures try to visually represent the meaning of the poem – both literate and poetic, but also the emotions and feelings connected to the poem.
For the final outcome, I tried to create something that a viewer can engage with and think about. First, I tried to create a simple video (at the end of this article) by putting the 9 concrete poetry pieces next to each other and layering them onto each other. The layering was interesting to me, but I wanted to create something different from regular concrete poetry or the way people engage with poetry. Something that keeps the idea of the at-first hidden meaning and clarity of the poem. But also translates the poem into something new. That’s how a PROTOTYPE of my little transparent poetry book came to life.
THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
For the third brief, I have chosen to work with a piece of poetry. The first thing I did with my poem was focus on personal thoughts and translation. Before starting the project, I didn’t know the poem, but it raised feelings and emotions the first time I read it. Some of them were probably the author’s intentions, but poetry always keeps space for a reader and their own opinions. I captured my own interpretation of the text.
The idea of my first experiment was to visualise the chosen piece of poetry using the letters and words of the poem, placing them into shapes to create a picture that translates the meaning of the poem, creating a piece of concrete poetry. First, I played around with simple shapes and then tried to create a whole complex picture that represents the meaning and my observations about the poem.
The second experiment was about visually translating the poem through a new language placed on the grid. This translation uses a new system of an alphabet, exchanging letters for positions on the grid supported by using dots, symbols, lines etc., creating diagrams/graphs like visualisations. I ended up with a visualised translation of the whole poem. However, after finishing this experiment, I knew that was not the right way to go, as it leaned away from the whole meaning of the poem.
In the third experiment, I focused on a moving image and a way to transfer my poem into an animation. The animated sketches in the video below are exploring the text being translated into a moving image. It is based on the narrative of the text, on the cycle of the tide, life and death, the darkness and light, but also my own understanding and feelings.